If you follow wine, you may have noticed a style shift over the past few years. The once-unquenchable consumer thirst for highly alcoholic, deeply concentrated, overoaked wines is subsiding as drinkers become better-educated about traditional European wine styles and the difficulty of pairing "monster" wines with food. More and more oenophiles are seeing the value in restraint.

In fact, this sea change is happening throughout the beverage industry. Savvy coffee drinkers are asking for light-to-medium-roast nuttiness in place of charcoal-black tar. Chocolate martinis are out; old-fashioned gin-based cocktails are in. Goodbye, Four Loko and Red Bull; hello, kombucha.

The new search for subtlety is changing Portland's brewing industry, too.

Where winemakers might overflavor their wines with toasty new-oak barrels, oak chips and oak extracts, many brewers overdo the hops.

Hops are conelike flower clusters that stabilize beer while imparting a pleasingly bitter flavor. Where this flavoring agent was once employed subtly, craft brewers have been in a competition of hops one-upsmanship over the past couple of decades, using pellets, extracts, powders and even hops-filled filters connected to bar taps as weapons in the battle.

"There's been this hops arms race, where the race to make super-hoppy beers leads to higher alcohol," explains brewer Dan Engler. To balance out excessive hoppiness, Engler says, "you have to brew the beer with more grain to increase the body and get more maltiness," which translates into higher alcohol content.

Engler is getting ready to open Portland's newest brewery and taproom, Occidental Brewing Co., at the end of March in the Cathedral Park Place complex in St. Johns. And he won't be serving overhopped beers, thank you very much.

"We're eschewing the standard microbrewery lineup, which is a lot of English-style ales and American IPAs," says Engler, who is brewmaster and co-owner at Occidental. "I'm personally not into that super-hoppy category. You see these IPAs in the 8 percent (alcohol by volume) range nowadays, which is pretty boozy. There's a place for that, but we're trying to do something different."

How hops got out of control

According to Portland brewing consultant Hans Gauger, the high-hops and high-alcohol trend grew out of four factors: First, the American craft-brewing movement originally came about as a reaction to the thin flavors of the mass-produced beers (think Coors, Miller and Budweiser) that dominate the market. Second, Americans love everything -- especially their beverages -- supersized; we're a nation with a "bigger is better" mentality. Third, getting higher alcohol and more hops for the same price as a beverage that's lower in alcohol and more subtle in flavor looks to consumers like more bang for the buck.

And finally, it's difficult to brew a clean and delicate golden or blonde ale; and the cool fermentation cycle required for lager-making is time-consuming and highly technical. For mom-and-pop craft brewers, it's much easier to brew big, clunky English-style ales like IPAs (India Pale Ales) than it is to make something light and refreshing.

"An IPA is a tsunami of sweet, citrus and floral flavor that someone raised on Coca-Cola and Gatorade can get into," Gauger says. "There has been a gap between thin American macrobeers and the rich micros. ... However, the sophistication of both the American brewer and the consumer is growing, and you will see more 4.5-percent ABV (alcohol by volume) craft lagers available."

For a visual confirmation of this trend, head to Coalition Brewing Co., which opened at Southeast 27th and Ankeny last June. Behind the bar at the pub, a chalkboard lists each beer's name and description along with two numbers: The alcohol percentage and the number of IBUs, or International Bitterness Units.

Coalition co-owner Elan Walsky and head brewer Bruce MacPhee both prefer to drink lower-alcohol, moderately hopped beers, up to about 50 IBUs. Their current offerings range from 4.4 percent alcohol by volume (ABV) and 28 IBUs to 6.2 percent ABV and 77 IBUs; that latter number represents an IPA that MacPhee had to be cajoled into making. (It's popular among the customers, he says, but it's not the style of beer he chooses to drink.)

"We want to be able to have two to three beers, really taste them all, and not be falling off the bar stool at the end of the evening," Walsky said. "We want to be able to appreciate the subtleties more. Like with anything, even if it is a good thing, there can be too much of it."

Similarly, visit Everybody's Brewing in White Salmon, Wash. (just across the Columbia River Gorge from Hood River, with beers on tap at various Portland-area pubs and restaurants), and you'll find a beer menu complete with ABV and IBU numbers. "When we can provide that information, we can start a conversation," says co-owner and brewmaster Doug Ellenberger. "There's a huge misconception as to what makes a good beer. We talk to our customers about balance. My philosophy is, beer doesn't need to be humongous to taste full-flavored or great."

ABV: Alcohol by volume. After a craze for beers with ABV numbers of 7 percent and up (and up, and up), the new moderate approach to brewing calls for beers in the range of 4 percent to 6 percent.

IBU: International Bitterness Units. It's worth noting that this number should be viewed as relative rather than absolute, because some higher numbers don't necessarily translate into more bitterness on the palate. In some cases, more hops are needed to balance malty flavors. And at Coalition Brewing Co., head brewer Bruce MacPhee favors the "fourth addition" hop-infusion method, which translates into hoppy aromas rather than flavors. That said, the IBU scale runs from about 16 to 100 units, and MacPhee prefers beers in the 50-and-under range. Way off the deep end: Dogfish Head, a craft brewery in Delaware, makes a "120-minute IPA" that clocks in at 18 percent ABV and 120 IBUs. Possible forewarning of the apocalypse: This past July, BrewDog brewery in Scotland released a limited-edition 55 percent ABV Belgian ale, packaged in bottles stuffed inside the taxidermied bodies of squirrels and stoats, called "The End of History." It's sold out, but you can still buy the brewery's other "extreme ales" (sold in normal bottles), including the 41 percent ABV "Sink the Bismark" (about $64 per bottle). Everything in moderation: Here are some great beers made in the less-is-more style. Note that there are exceptions to every rule, so always ask your server or beer merchant for help in finding lower-alcohol, lower-hopped beers:

Two recent local low-hops, low-alc finds: Coalition Brewing Co. WU C.R.E.A.M.: A cream ale named after a Wu-Tang Clan song, this medium-bodied beauty gets a honeylike sweetness from malt. The hops are balanced, with light notes of citrus and grassiness appearing more on the nose than the palate. Find it at the brewpub or on tap at pubs and restaurants around town. 4.8 percent ABV; 28 IBUs. Everybody's Brewing Local Logger Lager: Who said lagers were boring? This one has a medium-gold color, delicately spicy and floral notes, and some nice heft in the midpalate. Find it at the brewery or on tap at pubs and restaurants around town and in the gorge. 4.8 percent ABV; 26 IBUs.